Fragile Things
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Set between the Christmas specials of 2015 and 2016. Nardole's not the only one on Darillium who needs some repairs.


Fragile Things

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

"Is that what I think it is?" asked River, tilting her curly head.

Before her on the table lay the scattered parts of a robot body, as well as a severed head in a jar. The head looked quite peaceful, floating with closed eyes in its preservative fluid. It was round, bald, pale, and oddly familiar. It took her a while to place its owner's name, but she got it eventually.

"What in the worlds are you doing with Nardole?"

"Fixing him," said the Doctor gruffly. "What does it look like?"

"Well, obviously, but why?"

Instead of answering her question, her husband merely switched on his sonic screwdriver and used it to weld two bits of metal together.

"He should be finished in about, er … two Earth weeks," he said, avoiding her eyes.

 _Oh._

Two weeks. She glanced out the window. The sky outside their apartment was noticeably paler than it had been a few days ago. Darillium's sunrise should begin soon, and she would have to leave. She could sense grief like a sniper in the shadows, just waiting to hit her between the eyes. _But not yet. Please, God, not yet._

 _Focus on something else. Anything._

"Don't tell me you've chosen _him_ as your next companion," she said lightly, patting the jar as she would pat a child's head.

"And why not?"

"Well, to start with, he's neither young, pretty, nor female."

"Don't start." He rolled his eyes, just as she'd predicted, and began fussing with a tangle of wires. "I _know_ my last two bodies were shameless flirts, but will ye never let me live it down?"

"On the contrary, sweetie. You know how I enjoy a good flirt."

She brushed past him deliberately, letting him smell her hair and feel the silk of her bathrobe, before settling in next to him to help with the wiring. At the rate he was going, he'd have Nardole's nervous system installed upside down.

"In any case," River continued, "Isn't he a bit … fragile … for the job?"

The Doctor patted the metallic torso on the table. It gave off a resounding clang.

"When I'm done with him, he'll be built like a tank. By the way, d'ye remember where we keep the synthetic skin? I know I had a batch somewhere on the TARDIS. I want to make him look like he did before."

"Sealed container, top shelf, storage room twelve, dear, and that's not my point. He was … er, is … emotionally fragile. Can you imagine having your head chopped off while still alive, being forced to betray me, and – ? Well, you remember. It was bizarre even by our standards. I'm not sure the poor fellow can cope with any more adventures."

"Ach, you underestimate him." The Doctor grinned down at Nardole's head, a grin that did not quite reach his eyes. "Besides, well … I think a fragile passenger to take care of might be useful over the next few weeks."

Again, she understood more than he had said out loud.

He wanted someone weaker than himself, some responsibility to keep him sane once she was gone. Once the last pages of her TARDIS-blue diary had been filled.

"I see," she said. "Yes."

She remembered Nardole, from the days when he'd worked as a butler in King Hydroflax's household. The man was clumsy, awkward, and occasionally quite sarcastic, but he was also loyal. Many a servant would have needed much less motive than a beheading to betray her. And loyalty was, perhaps, the most important quality to look for in a traveling companion across time and space.

Somewhat to her surprise, the Doctor suddenly reached out, flung a tarp over the half-assembled cyborg body, and met her gaze head-on. His blue eyes blazed like the core of the TARDIS herself.

"The truth is," he rumbled, "I never want another Clara Oswald on my TARDIS again. She was too much like me. I don't love myself so much that I want a second edition tagging along. I like humans the way they are."

He had told her enough, mostly at her urging, in bits and pieces over the past twenty-four years, that she knew who Clara Oswald was. Thanks to a great deal of archeological research behind his back, she probably knew more than he did. Part of her instinctively bristled at his remark, even as the rest of her understood perfectly.

"Didn't you love her?" River felt compelled to say.

"I did," said the Doctor, still frowning, as he did when confronted with an especially nasty alien invader. "That was the problem. The Master _chose_ her for me in order that we'd destroy each other, and the Master was very nearly right."

River struggled to suppress a most inappropriate jealousy. She'd believed herself to be the only tailor-made enemy who was sent to destroy the Doctor and came to love him instead.

"I don't remember Clara," he said, with a grim shake of the head, "She must have been a charismatic sort of person. But I don't remember the charisma anymore, only the facts, and they're ... disturbing."

"How so?"

"She tried to take my TARDIS from me once. Because I wouldn't alter the fixed point that was her boyfriend's death."

River's hand rose to cover her mouth. She remembered the time she herself had almost destroyed her second mother, and the whole universe to boot. The Silence had made her do it. Had Clara done the same of her own free will?

It sounded evil. And yet, River understood all too well. Hadn't she nearly destroyed the universe once by refusing to kill the man she loved?

"She took on someone else's death sentence without knowing how the procedure worked," the Doctor went on, his face creased with long-remembered grief. "She assumed I was going to save her. And I failed."

River knew it would be useless to try to comfort him at this point. One word was all she could get past the ache of sympathetic tears in her throat.

"And?"

"And so I watched her die … and staged a coup d'etat on Gallifrey to get hold of a machine that would make her immortal."

River knew already that Gallifrey still existed, so the mention of it didn't take her breath away as it might otherwise have done. Still, she was awed by the sheer scale of the Doctor's audacity, even by his standards. A coup d'etat on Gallifrey. She would have thought that if anyone could stop the Doctor from doing something crazy, it would be his fellow Time Lords. Apparently not.

It really did sound unlike him, taking over a planet's government, even temporarily. He abhorred anything to do with politics and the military. He must, she thought with another secret twinge, have loved Clara Oswald very much indeed.

"Why would I do that?" He raked his hands through his silver hair. "I know what happens when I create immortals. I set two of them loose on the universe – I told you about Ashildr, didn't I? – I let Clara and Ashildr fly away, in a stolen TARDIS, no less."

"Well, in all fairness, this Ashildr and – who was the other one? – Jack Harkness turned out all right from what you've told me. Clara might do the same."

"Ach, I dunno. What was I thinking?"

"You were thinking, I suppose," said River, "Of saving lives. It's what you always do, Doctor – even when it might not be the best idea. You should be old enough to understand that sometimes the only way to save someone is by letting them go."

Death frightened him. She knew this without being told. She knew by the way he'd reacted to Amy's reading glasses, that first unmistakable sign of human aging. In all his millennia, he still hadn't learned that there were worse things than dying. Professor River Song, assassin, archeologist, detective and orphan, had the advantage of him there.

"I've never been good at that," said the Doctor, in a voice so low that most humans could not have heard him. "Letting go."

"I know." She wrapped her arms around him from behind, feeling the tension drain out of him, if only slightly, at her touch. "You're incorrigible."

It was his greatest weakness, but also his greatest strength. He never gave up on anyone, even the Master, even River herself in her younger days as his bespoke psychopath. He wouldn't even give up on an innocent butler who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and died a gruesome death that anyone else would consider final. Anyone except the Doctor.

How she loved him.

"Come to bed, honey," she murmured in his ear. "I'll help you with this tomorrow. We'll make Nardole the finest cyborg in the galaxy."

"Hmm. Maybe give him a higher IQ while we're at it."

She swatted him on the arm in playful reproach.

For the rest of the eight-hour span that would have been night on Earth, neither of them spoke. His contentment was a fragile thing she did not wish to disturb. She fell asleep in the circle of his arm, looking out at the night sky with its gray tinge that warned of the sunrise.

She thought about letting go. It would have to be soon, now. It was all very well to lecture him about it, but how would she feel when she had to let him go?

 _Not yet,_ she whispered to the fading night.


End file.
